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Generally speaking, when the justices are pondering whether to accept a pending petition, litigants routinely frame questions differently in hopes of strengthening their position or persuading the court to examine a specific topic. It's not uncommon for that jockeying to continue even after the justices grant review and disclose the questions they've agreed to answer. But those tactics can be risky since the justices tightly control their docket and devote their limited energies to contemplating the questions they've agreed to answer. Coincidentally, testy exchanges about deviation from a question presented also occurred earlier Tuesday during Supreme Court arguments in the case Thompson v. U.S. "You're asking us to decide something much broader than the straightforward question … that was in the question presented and that was in the cert petition," Justice Brett Kavanaugh told a lawyer at one point in the Thompson arguments. But stretching the scope of a case can also bear fruit. One of the best-known examples occurred in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, where Mississippi officials initially won review of a fairly typical abortion-rights question, but then pivoted to asking the justices to strike down Roe v. Wade — a gambit that ultimately succeeded. In Waetzig's case, the Tenth Circuit's ruling broke with the conclusions of most circuits that have addressed the Rule 60 issue, but the Denver-based appeals court also wrote one of the more in-depth decisions on the issue. Another substantive and widely cited opinion emerged in 2013 at the Fifth Circuit, which in Yesh Music v. Lakewood Church rejected a "technical interpretation" of when a dismissal is "final," holding that "a plain reading of 'final' supports defining it as something which is practically 'finished,' 'closed' or 'completed.'" It wasn't clear from Tuesday's arguments how the justices overall were leaning, but Justices Kagan and Jackson were joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor in seeming sympathetic toward Waetzig's view of Rule 60, and Justice Clarence Thomas also made a passing comment that seemed unpersuaded by one of Halliburton's main points. Justice Roberts, however, sounded relatively skeptical, and Justices Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett didn't speak during the argument — which, at roughly 49 minutes, was among the shortest of the term. The dispute between Waetzig and Halliburton hasn't attracted widespread interest, but the parties and some observers have said the implications are considerable. Waetzig, for instance, has averred during briefing that the Tenth Circuit's holding would create a "twilight zone between interlocutory and final matters where courts bizarrely would be powerless to correct mistakes and frauds."